Posts tagged Africa

Lake Malawi is an African Great Lake and the southernmost lake in the East African Rift system. This lake, the third largest in Africa and the eighth largest lake in the world, is located between Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania. It is the second deepest lake in Africa, although its placid northern shore gives no hint of its depth. This great lake’s tropical waters are reportedly the habitat of more species of fish than those of any other body of freshwater on Earth.

Smoke from fires in central-southern Africa hovers over the land in Zambia and Malawi between Lake Malawi (upper right, on the Malawi-Mozambique border), Lake Kariba (lower left, on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border) and Lake Bangweulu (upper left). Surrounded by patchy clouds at the lower center is Lake Cahora Bassa, in Mozambique.

A dense veil of smoke from fires in central-southern Africa obscures most of the ground below, in the border area by Angola, Zambia and the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Upon closer inspection, multiple individual plumes of smoke blowing towards the west can be discerned through the cloud.

A dust storm or sand storm is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Particles are transported by saltation and suspension, a process that moves soil from one place and deposits it in another. Here, there appears to be a transference of dust between the Sahara Desert in Africa and the drylands of the Arabian peninsula. Both regions are the main terrestrial sources of airborne dust.

A smoky haze hangs over central-southern Africa, particularly near the upper and left edges of this image. In the full image, many individual fires can be discerned in Angola, many of which are located northwest of the Okavango Inland Delta (bottom center, in Botswana). The plumes of smoke from those blazes are blowing due southwest.